Silence andSavoir-Fairein the Marketing of Products of theTerroir

The value of terroir products is dependent upon the ‘immaterial labour’ invested by marketers in constructing the brand identity of such products as a guarantee of quality and authenticity. This article will trace the history of the discursive construction of terroir products, from the interwar years onwards, showing how this has typically worked to occlude the realities of labour behind the production of terroir products. The article will demonstrate how the French have marketed products of the terroir with little reference to the savoir-faire of labour, preferring instead to locate the value of terroir products in idealised depictions of place and savoir-vivre. In their reliance on immaterial labour and the consequent occlusion of the realities of production, terroir products might appear thus to constitute Post-Fordist commodities par excellence. Yet the discursive construction of terroir products has a longer history, dating back to the Fordist era.